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Thursday, February 21, 2013

My posts have been a little sporatic lately. I always think of good things to write about but when I have time to write, I forget what I was going to say. I should probably start writing down a reminder or takes notes in a 'note'book. You know, because that's what they're for... to take notes.

So, anyway... About 6 months ago I was taking a spin class and was talking with the instructor about how I had gotten my spin certification a few months prior. It was just an offhand comment at the time while making chit-chat before class started. I had never done anything with the certification even though I should have started to try and teach classes as soon as possible to pay for the darn certification. But, I was scared and unsure of how good I would be in front of the class and just kept putting it off.
About a month ago the same spin instructor, Mike, asked me if I had talked to Katharine about subbing his spin class. I of course said no because I had no idea what he was talking about. He said that he was going out of town for work and needed people to sub his class. He asked me to give him my information and he would pass it on to Katharine. A couple of days later I was giving a mini-demo to Katharine and a week later I was teaching my first spin class. Funny how things work out, right? Even funnier is that I had about 2 weeks left to take the certification exam and renew my membership before I would have been forced to take the $300 class again to be certified.
Teaching the class was not as scary as I thought it was going to be. Less stressful than giving a speech. I'll post whatever my profiles are here, but they are by no means always going to have a point. I wanted my first two classes to have point since I was teaching a Tuesday night and a Thursday night class. So, Tuesday was hills and Thursday was a lot of jumps and sprints. Also, after taking spin classes for over 7 years, I finally invested in a pair of cycling shoes. I have bike shoes for my tri bike, but the cleats are different than what you need for the spin bikes. So, I just bought a separate pair of shoes and cleats specifically for spinning classes. Btw, if you take spin regularly, don't be like me and wait forever to invest in a pair of bike shoes for the spin class. You get so much more out of the session if you are wearing the right shoes because you can push and pull. In case you have looked for shoes before and were as confused as I was, this is what you'll need:
1) shoes with two holes, NOT three. They can be any shoes. They don't have to be 'spin' specific or mtn bike specific. They can be any kind that you like as long as they have only 2 holes.
2) cleats - 99% of all spin bikes work with the Shimano SM-SH52 SPD Cleat Sets. They look like this:
You can use the SH51, SH52, or SH56. I honestly don't know what the difference is between them. I think the SH52 is more for spin bikes and the 51 and 56 are more for mountain biking.
You can get all of these pieces at your local bike shop (LBS). The shoes will be anywhere from $50 to $200 but anything in the $70 to $100 is probably your best best. The cleats are around $20. You can install the cleats yourself, but obviously your LBS can do it too.

I'm set to sub another class next week. Once I get the playlist for that put together I'll post all three that I have in case anyone thinks they're good enough to use, feel free to use them.

On another note, I'm sad to say that I had to drop out of the Vineman Full distance race in July in California. I still want to do the race, but 1) the costs were getting to be too much and 2) it wasn't part of my plan for this year either.
So, let's talk about this.
1) The costs - I knew I would be paying around $400 r/t to get out there. But, all the flights I was looking at were hovering around $480 r/t. Not a huge difference, I know. Let's add in the hotel, car rental, food expenses while over there, and then the costs of shipping the bike. Which on top of being expensive, was going to be a total pain in the ass. There aren't any bike shipping companies that would ship my bike fully assembled. This means that I had to take my bike to a LBS, have them disassemble it and package it up for me. Then take it over to a UPS or FedEx and have them ship it to the bike shop affiliated with the race who would then send it over to the race site to be re-assembled. To get it back, I just have to take it to the company that was handling the bikes that were shipped in and they would take care of dis-assembling it, packing it back up and shipping it back. I mean, I had to pay for it all, but I didn't actually have to take it to the different places to get it shipped back. So, what does that add up to. Probably $35 to disassemble, $50 to package, $100 to ship, $35 to assemble there, $35 to disassemble again after the race, $50 to package again, $100 to ship back, and another $35 to reassemble. Grand total: $440. And, honestly, those estimates are generous. I had my bike put together before and it cost me about $80. After some thinking, I realized this race wasn't that important to me and I would rather save my money and put it into upgrading my bike or for a wedding/honeymoon.
2) Included in my thinking was the fact that I hadn't planned on doing this race. I set this year to be focused around Olympic and HIM distance tri's with some running races thrown in there. I wanted to work on my speed at the shorter distances and save my sanity for training for IMFL 2014. So, in the end I am back to my original plan. If you read my post a while back about finding the perfect training plan then you would probably be thinking right now "so what is going to happen with your training plan now?" Well, all that frustration over finding/putting together the perfect plan was useless. Hmmm, I shouldn't say useless. I did find a lot of good stuff and I'm still going to use the training plan that I've created, I'm just going to cut back on the number of weekly training sessions and the distance on the weekend.
As a #3) this wasn't really part of my reasoning but does make the decision to drop out easier is Daniel. He's finishing up a couple of more classes to get his MBA and he's been so busy with it. By not doing the race he doesn't have to worry about travelling with me when he may have a test to study for or a group project to work on; and I can also help out more around the house and spend more time with him when he does have free time because I won't be doing quite as much training. So, in the end it works out better for our relationship for me to not do this race. Even though he would have been supportive of it, it's one less thing to worry about when there is a lot on his mind right now.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

This year’s RnR half marathon in St. Pete went very well.The weather was perfect, a near 40 degrees warmer than last year, at about 65 degrees.I went into the race feeling good but not expecting to stay under 8 min/mi for the entire 13.1 miles.I had a honey stinger about 30 minutes before the race and sipped on a mix of powerwade, a scoop of bcaa powder, and a scoop of jack3d energy powder.I started the race a lot slower than last year, but finished faster which is the way I prefer to race:

2013: 2012:

Split

Time

Distance

Avg Pace

Time

Distance

Avg Pace

1

7:37

1.00

7:37

7:20

1.00

7:20

2

7:43

1.00

7:43

7:24

1.00

7:24

3

7:35

1.00

7:35

8:13

1.00

8:13 – stopped to use the bathroom

4

7:32

1.00

7:32

7:20

1.00

7:20

5

7:27

1.00

7:27

7:16

1.00

7:16

6

7:32

1.00

7:32

7:18

1.00

7:18

7

7:28

1.00

7:28

7:29

1.00

7:29

8

7:35

1.00

7:35

7:40

1.00

7:40

9

7:26

1.00

7:26

7:36

1.00

7:36

10

7:20

1.00

7:20

7:50

1.00

7:50

11

7:14

1.00

7:14

7:30

1.00

7:30

12

7:18

1.00

7:19

7:41

1.00

7:41

13

7:02

1.00

7:02

7:26

1.00

7:26

14

1:22

0.21

6:26

1:37

0.25

6:30

I only took 2 gels, one at mile 5 – Clif Stawberry and the other at mile 10 – Powerbar Berry.I took water at every aid station and took a cup of Gatorade at mile 8.You can see my times start to get significantly faster starting around mile 7.I ended up next to this girl around mile 5 and we ran side by side.Around mile 7 she started to push the pace faster.I was able to stick with her until the water stop at mile 11 and then I had to back off a bit.I’m glad that she was there to push me though.I wouldn’t have done it myself and then I wouldn’t have PR’d.If you remember from my Beach 2 Battleship recap, I ended up next to a girl at the beginning of the bike leg that was pushing the pace.I decided to let her go and stay within my own pre-set limits until I got further into the bike leg.If I would have started with the girl at the RnR race in the beginning and she kept pushing the pace within the first couple of miles, I would have let her go too.But, because we were a little over half way through the race, I decided to try and keep up with her.My final time was 1:38:09.2012 was 1:39:24.I have 2 more half marathons and then Boston.After this past weekend’s performance, I’m expecting some good times this year.All of the upcoming races are ones that I did last year so I will results that are better to compare against since the courses will be the same.

Race attire:

Visor – Nike feather light visor

Shirt – Women Rock Marathon tank top

Shorts – Nike pro combat compression shorts

Socks – Road Runner Sports ankle tab dry-fit

Shoes – Brooks Pure Cadence2 – I am in love with these shoes by the way

Headphones – Jay Bird Bluetooth

Music – iPod nano 6th gen

Race belt – Spibelt with 3 gel holders on each side and a pouch in the middle.This is the first time I’ve used this belt.It worked ok.It wouldn’t really stay on my hips as well as my iFitness one does.But, I guess it will work.Maybe I’ll try tightening it for the next race.I really like my iFitness one but I wanted one with the gel holders and the pouch and all the ones like that by iFitness have a wide waistband.I wanted to minimize what I carry around my waste.That’s why I decided to get the Spibelt.Both belts are water-resistant which is a necessity for me because I sweat a lot and pore a lot of water on myself unless it’s under 70… then I just sweat a lot J.

Race Review:

St. Petersburg is pretty flat.There is one small dip and climb in the first mile.There is no shade anyone on the course, but this race is held at the perfect time of year where it’s 99% of the time sunny and around 65 degrees.Sometimes it varies and you’ll get 30 degree whether like last year or high 70s like previous years.But, obviously these two extremes are outside the norm.There seemed to be spectators along almost the entire route.Other notes:

Good –

·there were plenty of port-a-lets

·cups of water were set out if you wanted to hydrate some before the race

·they had the corrals set up with people standing there to check your bib to make sure you were going to the right corral

·they started right on time

·every aid/water station had a sign about .10 miles before it letting you know that there was a water stop coming up

·there was a water stop just about every mile

·post-race food selection was good – water, Gatorade, bananas, mini bagels, chocolate milk, cups of fruit, and granola bars.I may have missed a couple of things.

·they had cold towels at the end

Bad –

·they make you get there so early if you do the park and ride.The race didn’t start until 7:30 but they wanted you in the parking lot no later than 6:15

·they charge for parking for the expo.Although you can get around this because there is a parking lot right across the street that is free and all the street meter parking is free too since the expo is held on the weekend

·this isn’t necessarily a bad thing that they did.But, there was so much stuff at the end that you could grab to eat and drink that you ran out of hands to carry everything.It would be nice if they gave you a bag to put everything in.Disney started doing this and it is awesome

·they messed up the mile marker placement for mile 10.It was about .2 miles ahead of where it should have been.This also isn’t a huge deal, but it did through me off a little since I was planning to take a gel at mile 10.So, I ended up taking it a little earlier than I meant to.

All in all, RnR pretty much knows what they’re doing.The race went smoothly and I will probably do it again next year.

After the race, Sarah, Daniel, and I met up with Cesar at Square One for burgers.Sarah and I split the Peanut Butter and Nutella shake.Yes, it was delicious!The rest of the day was hanging out and relaxing.Just the way I like it.I ended the night watching the season premiere of The Walking Dead with Daniel and eating homemade pizza by Daniel.

Friday, February 1, 2013

I am so glad it’s Friday.I still have half a day to get through, but at least the end is in sight.It’s almost like passing the finish line but you know you still have to circle back around and do another 2 or 3 miles.So. Close.Yet, so far away.

Anywho, what are the plans for this weekend?Well, I’ve got a 16-mile bridge run date in Clearwater with Sarah and a few others tomorrow and a 50 or so miles bike ride out in the nearest “hilly” location of San Antonio.Should be fun, fun, fun.Weather is going to be awesome, mid-50’s to 70’s.This morning was not so pleasant weather-wise.I went out with Aaron and John at Davis Island and did a mini-duathlon: 1 mile run, 19 mile bike ride, and a 2 mile run.Not sure of the pace on the first mile because I didn’t have my watch on yet.But, the bike ride was around 21 mph average pace and the 2nd run was a 7:45 mile and a 7:35 mile.I couldn’t feel my toes, but my pace was darn good!

Another accomplishment, I finished 2 of 6 months of my training plan for Vineman. YAY!

In other news,

I have been using the my Brooks PureFlow shoes for my longer runs because they have a little more support than my other favorite shoes, the K-Swiss Kwicky Blade Light. I wanted to do a little review on the Brooks PureFlow2 because I was able to get my hands on a pair a couple of weeks ago.They are awesome.What I like about the PureFlow are the stability, cushion, and fit.What I didn’t like was that the tongue moved to the far left (on the left shoe) and the far right (on the right shoe) when I ran and that there are no drainage holes (like all of their shoes).The PureFlow2 kept all the things I like and fixed the issue with the sliding tongue.The new tongue is just an extension of the upper on one side and separates from the rest of the upper on the other side. Other new features are: the awesome color schemes they offer - bright pink with black accents and black with a neon green sole, and the shoes are a little lighter coming in at 7.2oz.My hope for the next upgrade will be drainage holes.I sweat a lot and in the summer time, well pretty much spring, summer, and fall time here in Florida, and I pour a lot of water on myself so my socks and shoes are always soaked by the end of my runs.